It’s been a pretty quiet hurricane season so far, but that is changing now. We’re past the statistical peak of hurricane season and we’re only on the “F” storm, Fiona. September is the statistical peak month of hurricane season.
Most of the storm activity so far has remained on the weaker side as a tropical storm or entirely out to sea with no impact to land. But in the next week or so we’ll be making progress down the list with Gaston and Hermine likely by next week.
Of course the immediate headline is unfortunately the aftermath of Fiona. The major hurricane is now moving into the open waters of the Atlantic but left horrific flooding across Puerto Rico, damage in the Dominican Republic, and is just pushing away from The Bahamas and Turks & Caicos.
Fiona is currently a Category 3 hurricane and the forecast from the National Hurricane Center is for it to become a Category 4 hurricane as it enters the open waters. It currently has sustained winds of 115 mph and wind gusts up to 140 mph.
From there, it heads directly north and unfortunately we won’t be done hearing about Fiona any time soon. It’s heading north toward Bermuda and from there the Canadian Maritimes. The cone of concern in the track from the National Hurricane Center is the the uncertainty of where the center of the storm will track — it’s NOT the cone of where the impacts will be felt. Bermuda will see impacts from this storm, of course if the storm tracks on the western side of the cone, the impacts will be less than if the storm tracks on the eastern side of the cone.
For us, the will be little to no impact from Fiona. With such a large storm off shore, we’ll see rough surf — especially Friday and Saturday. Waves will be 4-7 feet on the beaches with waves of 40-50 feet possible off shore! Thankfully it’s not much of a beach weekend on tap anyway.
So that’s the latest on Fiona but as I mentioned, there are two other storms we’re watching as well. Newly formed Tropical Storm Gaston. he good news with Gaston is it’s entirely a fish storm, staying out over the Atlantic waters.
And finally is an “area to watch” east of the Windward Islands. Right now it’s currently nothing but has an 80% chance to become at least a tropical depression in the next five days. This also bears watching as the path would likely take it into the Caribbean Sea and perhaps the Gulf of Mexico. Again, this is not even a storm yet but if it does form into one, would bear watching over the next week or so. If this one becomes named, it will be named Hermine.
